Chapter 2. SuperEdit procedures and samples

Table of Contents

Hybrid raster-vector editing
Raster images in world coordinates
Tessel Composite Documents
SuperEdit layout, toolbars and menus
Viewing scanned drawings in SuperEdit
Viewing vector drawings in SuperEdit
Editing raster images
Using color photographs
Comparing raster images
Creating composite documents
Selecting and controlling subdocuments
Merging subdocuments into single raster files
Editing vector drawings
Drawing entities
Drawing tools
User Data Attributes
Layers
Text styles
Patterns
Blocks
Vector drawings in foreground and in background
Using Magnifying Glass
Using raster snap
Raster snap for color images
Cropping and changing page size
Aligning and resizing scanned images
Calibrating raster images
Calibrating scanned maps
Cut / Copy / Paste editing
Filtering spots
Printing hybrid documents

This chapter is a guided tour through the most common ways of using SuperEdit . In order to provide you with some drawings to play with, Setup has installed a number of sample documents in the DOC subdirectory. First let’s have a closer look at the two corner stones of SuperEdit : hybrid raster-vector editing and Tessel Composite Documents .

Hybrid raster-vector editing

In contrast to large format raster editors that operate directly on a bitmap image of the scanned document, SuperEdit uses a hybrid raster-vector technique that builds on the following:

  • full resolution scanned documents are kept always as files on the hard disk - the raster data is never loaded to RAM, so it does not compete for the computer resources;

  • SuperEdit shows views that are calculated on as needed basis according to the current zoom extents and resolution requirements;

  • nominal parameters like orientation, scale, units, insertion point, are used in order to present the views correctly mapped into world coordinates system;

  • the DWG, DXF and HPGL vector drawings can be shown as view-only subdocuments;

  • all raster and vector subdocuments are always registered properly in the same world coordinate system and can be zoomed and scrolled simultaneously using SuperEdit commands or standard MS Windows interface;

  • SuperEdit provides tools for controlling and editing of raster images, primarily by defining the coordinates system for them and providing tools for clearing selected areas of raster, cut / copy / paste / merge editing, and more advanced operations like resizing, rotating and multi-point calibration of raster images;

  • SuperEdit provides tools for drafting that may be used to create new lines, symbols, texts and other entities that are kept in TVD drawings; SuperEdit drafting tools may use selective raster snaps; more advanced vectorization is supported by tracing raster lines;

  • SuperEdit may insert selected vector entities to raster images and rasterize whole vector drawings or composite documents creating new raster images;

  • both raster and vector drawings can be printed together as one hybrid document using the standard Print command.